To what ISO do you have your camera set? The Fstop/Sspeed seem off for the pictures I'm seeing here. Was it cloudy?
Sunballs usually do best with a higher aperture setting ie f/14 or greater on the D200, but if you are already shooting at 1/40th of a second...
The D200 and the earlier crop of Dslr's (Can you believe that was only last year?) really had a tough time with over-saturating the chip. Banding is the most common aberration you will see, especially at the apertures you are shooting.
With that said, you can use that to your advantage. For instance, in the barracuda picture, it is silhouetted nicely in the sunball. Perhaps if you had been able to stop down without introducing camera shake you would be able to control the sun a bit more. I'm surprised how sharp it is considering your shutter speed.
You can see in the second picture at the edge of the sunball where the top of the reef becomes washed out. That's over-saturation at work. But I like the framing and use of negative space. The image might pop a bit more if you crop a bit of the bottom of the image. The reef top is acting as a horizon, and that is almost dead center in the image.

I am using an ISO of 100. I would guess that the reason for the f stops and shutter speed to be off would be the points where I meter (I'm using spot metering). This is my 2nd time with the setup and I'm still learning hard ... thxs for all the advices given so far ...

I am using an ISO of 100. I would guess that the reason for the f stops and shutter speed to be off would be the points where I meter (I'm using spot metering). This is my 2nd time with the setup and I'm still learning hard ... thxs for all the advices given so far ...

I don't want to beat a dead horse or insult you, but are you sure of the shutter speeds you have posted? The first shot (if not cropped) would put the spot metering well within the center of the sunball, just below the 'cuda's belly, no?At 100 ISO i would expect more like 400 shutter speed, not 40.The D200 is a great camera to learn with. It was last years Pro model! You'll get many excellent images with it.

the shutter speed was based on what i got from flickr ... l would need to double check with my laptop again ... but nevertheless, thxs Matt for the advice ... it was great to know what was wrong ... so that I can learn from my mistakes .... much better than just getting replies without saying why ...

the shutter speed was based on what i got from flickr ... l would need to double check with my laptop again ... but nevertheless, thxs Matt for the advice ... it was great to know what was wrong ... so that I can learn from my mistakes .... much better than just getting replies without saying why ...

Grab yourself a copy of Martin Edges " The Underwater Photographer " I think its the fourth edition that he talks about this subject. Its a great book full of usefull info and also contains sections from other WP members. IMHO the book is priceless.

To give you some ideas from my sunburst work with the Tokina 10-17mm FE and my Nikon D90.

I try and shoot at the highest shutter speed which the camera can flash sync to. In my case with the D90 its 1/200th.

I play with from f9-f13 and ISO100. The other issue is strobe lighting. I normally have around 2/3rds 3/4 (Ikelite ds161's) depending on the vis and depth.

I have been recently shooting alot of Sunbursts with Manta's, Leopard Sharks, Turtles. There a few on my flickr (link below) if you like to have a look at what I am saying. page 4 is a good place to start.

Even then, you could certainly regard the sunburst as over-exposed. I don't use the lightmeter so much as set the fastest shutter speed for strobe synchronisation, set the strobes to manual and full or half power, and try a range of exposures bracketed around f11. This is such a difficult thing to do well. You'll also notice that my Inon strobes are barely putting out enough light to add colour in the foreground.

Assuming you were in an automatic mode, is it possible that you were spot-metering your exposure in the dead centre, right on the silhouetted fish, so your camera was trying to expose that correctly, thereby over-exposing the surrounding sunball? If you had metered anywhere else then sky would have been much less burned-out and the fish would be completely black. Just a thought.

Try out different metering modes and/or try using the +/- exposure compensation in automatic modes, and/or switch to manual and experiment.

I second the recommendation of reading Martin Edge's 'The Underwater Photographer' (get the 4th edition). It really is extraordinarily good. I re-read it before every trip!